


Palindrome

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Betrayal, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Friendship/Love, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: The events of Captain Marvel turn out differently and Carol finds herself in the unenviable position of deciding what to do with Yon-Rogg. Despite both of their intentions, history repeats itself.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Yon-Rogg
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

“I used to have bad dreams,” Carol told him as they sat in the cockpit of Mar-Vell’s, Lawson’s, ship. She took another sip of Terran hot chocolate, the last of her precious supply until they managed to find a port with Terran goods again. She stared out past him into the vast expanse of stars.

Ordinarily, Carol soared ahead of the ship, scouting into the great void beyond where the ship’s radar could reach. He had a feeling that she was only sitting here now, confined to the cockpit like a mere mortal, because of him.

The Skrulls didn’t like him sitting here by himself, fearing he might change their course or sabotage the ship without their knowledge. Never mind that neither they nor Carol would ever allow that to happen. Even after all these years, the Skrulls could never quite trust him.

He understood, he was Kree after all, but that didn’t mean that he liked it.

It was a pity then, that after waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, that the cockpit was the only place where he could return to himself. Had he stared out at these same stars back then? He imagined he had, perhaps not these stars, not at this end of the galaxy, but he must have looked out at similar lights and wondered.

Perhaps he’d thought about Carol soaring through the night, a star in her own right, golden dust trailing behind in her wake. Perhaps he’d thought of the Skrulls, a people he had supposedly hated then and sought to annihilate at the whims of an artificial intelligence. Or, perhaps, he’d sat there and wondered how many worlds were out there and how different they were from his own.

He didn’t know, and unlike most things, he wasn’t sure Carol could tell him.

He had been very private; Carol had told him once. Most Kree were, they didn’t wear their hearts, emotions, or thoughts on their sleeves. Emotions were considered a debilitating weakness, especially in warriors like Yon-Rogg. He’d been trained from a young age to keep his most precious thoughts to himself.

She could tell him his favorite foods, that he’d loved to train children, that he’d spent much of the past six years training her, but she couldn’t tell him what he was thinking when he looked out at the stars.

Sometimes, he cursed the previous Yon-Rogg for his lack of foresight. If only he’d known better, known that it would be Carol Danvers’ memory alone that would preserve him, then maybe he’d think to save something of himself in her.

Now all he had was the occasional bad dream, Carol, muscle memory, and the suspicion of a people he’d given up everything to protect.

He spared her a glance, but she was lost in her memories, in her own bad dreams. Carol had regained her memories after six years, in part because hers had not been stolen by head trauma, but because the Kree AI had taken them from her. For six years though, she’d been just like him, lost in a void seeking out any hint of familiarity.

He sometimes mused that it could mean there was hope for him yet, he could suddenly regain his memories too, but with each passing year he doubted it. Wherever Yon-Rogg of the past had gone, he doubted he’d ever return.

“They’re not always bad,” he said.

Tonight, yes, and by the knowing look in her dark eyes there was no fooling her on that. However, it was true, they weren’t always awful. It wasn’t always his own face contorted in an awful sneer, laughing at him, while silver snakes strangled him and dragged him down into the silver water and drowned him. It wasn’t always Carol, glowing and vengeful, striking a burning hand through his chest and tearing out his heart, whispering, “Liar”, in his ear as he tumbled into the void.

“Sometimes there’s—” he paused, not quite sure how to say it, “There are flashes.”

Her, mostly, the good dreams were often of Carol. Strange, nonsensical, dreams that contained flashes of memories. He and Carol flew to worlds he’d never seen before, they had picnics on the purple beaches of red oceans, she wrote the word “Vers” in backwards Kree glyphs, and she’d glow like a second sunset on the shore as she laughed at something inane he’d said just to make her smile.

“Good flashes?” she asked, blonde eyebrow raised.

“They’re not bad,” he said with his own smile.

He wished the flashes would tell him more about his life, about Hala and the world he’d left behind, but he supposed he’d take what he could get.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Carol said with a considering hum, “You don’t have to look behind, don’t have to yearn for what you miss.”

Had she? Yes, she must have. Even with her memories gone she said she’d always tried to find out the past, longed for it, some sense of identity and meaning in a world where she was an orphan. Some part of her had always been reaching back to Earth, to Maria and Monica waiting on the surface.

As for him…

He felt like he should miss something. Like his heart should feel torn in half to leave his home, his people, even for a worthy cause. If it had taken him so long, six years, to return Carol to herself and aid the Skrulls, then he must have been very conflicted. Carol always said he’d been extremely devoted to the AI, had been raised to be and wanted to believe in it, and it had taken him six years and the order to exterminate Carol to change his mind.

It was just so hard to imagine ever even entertaining the idea of harming her.

Perhaps he hadn’t realized what he did to her, Carol implied he’d never really thought it through, but Yon-Rogg didn’t want anyone to live as he lived, as Carol had once lived, a stranger to yourself and all you knew.

“Hey,” Carol said, poking him in the shoulder, “You’re thinking too much again.”

“Sorry,” he said quietly, but as usual, she seemed to see straight through him.

“It’s fine,” Carol said, “I forgave you a long time ago. Besides, you were… different then.”

“Was I?” he asked.

“Yes,” Carol insisted, “You… You thought you were doing the right thing.”

She meant that, but then, Carol always meant what she said. She looked at him with firm insistence, her dark eyes burning into his, her face set in determination as if just daring him to challenge her.

Still, he couldn’t help but ask, “When would this have ever been the right thing?”

She snorted, “It wasn’t, and I was pissed as hell at the time, I even—Well, you’re right, it wasn’t and will never be the right thing, but you didn’t know that. You were all kinds of messed up.”

He wondered about that. He believed her, or at least, believed that she believed that, but… He imagined having done that to her, looked down at Carol’s broken body, and brought her back to his dark masters to unwittingly serve in their wars of destruction.

He wanted to ask if he had been a good man. Of all the things he’d asked her though, that one he didn’t dare. He didn’t want to know her answer.

Maybe she was right, maybe it was better that Yon-Rogg the Kree loyalist stayed dead. He could keep his dark secrets, his servitude to blood-soaked empires, and the many betrayals he undoubtedly committed. Yon-Rogg the defector would slowly but surely work to eradicate the sins he couldn’t remember, would try to earn the respect and trust of a people who had no reason to trust him, and he would try to live up to what Carol saw in him.

He would try desperately to become the best version of himself.

“You know,” Carol mused with a mischievous smile on her face, “Whenever I had bad dreams on Hala, I always knocked down your door in the middle of the night and asked you to spar.”

“Did you?” Somehow, he can just see it. The enigmatic Commander Yon-Rogg quietly asleep in his room or else meditating and then bam, there goes the door, kicked in by a grinning Carol Danvers stating, “Best two out of three, bitch!”

Her smile turned into a full-blown grin, “You always looked exhausted when you opened the door. Like you’d keel over right then and there. You never said no though, not once, not even when it’d been five nights in a row and you were recovering from being shot in the thigh.”

“Really?” he asked, trying to picture it.

“Really, one of the few times I actually took it easy on you.”

He laughed at that, “Well, I imagine you finally had pity on me and felt I deserved a victory or two.”

She gave him a funny look then, as if at first trying to decide if he was joking, and then realized that there was something fundamental in this conversation he was missing. It was in moments like this, whenever she made that face, that he felt the previous Yon-Rogg’s absence so sharply.

Finally, Carol shook herself, “Well, now, sure, I’d hand your ass to you and back again. But back then I rarely beat you, on a good day, maybe but… I wasn’t in control of my powers yet, didn’t use them in sparring so I could focus on getting by without them, and you were one of the best.”

That was hard to imagine. He didn’t spend much time fighting these days. Most of the time they were in the deep expanse of space, hurtling forward beyond the Kree’s ever-reaching grasp and searching for a planet just dull enough to escape notice but habitable enough to support the Skrulls.

Whenever they did get into trouble Carol was always the one to take care of it. If Yon-Rogg had ever been suited to more than a desk job then there was little point in using those abilities now. Carol was better, period, and if he ever were to partake in combat…

He had a feeling that Talos wouldn’t like it.

“You don’t believe me,” Carol said slowly, her face pale in horrified disbelief.

“No, no, I’m sure you’re right—”

She kept looking at him, her face growing paler, as if she realized something very important. He wanted to curse, he knew what she realized, she just realized she was missing yet another piece of Yon-Rogg. She’d once known a man and all she had now were a few scattered pieces left in the shape of him, a pale reminder of a good friend, and once again he’d failed her.

She stood, drained the last of her drink, and held out a hand to him as she commanded, “Come on, up.”

“What?”

She grabbed his hand when he didn’t reach out to take hers and yanked him onto his feet. He stumbled forward gracelessly, bumping into her.

“Come on,” she said, her smile the sun shining out behind clouds, “We’re going to jog your memory.”

With that she pulled him away from the cockpit and towards the hold, the only place on the ship large enough to serve as Carol’s training floor, and now, apparently, his.

* * *

It was a small lie.

One that, in some other world, would never have occurred to her at all.

In some other world, maybe better, maybe worse, she sent Yon-Rogg back to Hala in disgrace. He touched down in a broken-down escape pod, battered and bruised, and limped his way to the Supremor with Carol Danvers’ message from Earth: that she is coming for them.

Carol didn’t know what would have happened to that Yon-Rogg. At the time, she hadn’t thought that far ahead, something he undoubtedly would have chided her for when he had the power to chide her. She could almost hear him, see the fondness that he tried and failed to hide from her, _“Emotions are dangerous, Vers. They distract you, tie you to the past and present. Emotions cloud your understanding of the future.”_

Perhaps nothing would have changed, he’d remain a commander, his team would have a large Vers-shaped hole inside of it, and life would go on with a new mission to destroy her and the Skrulls at all costs. Then, perhaps, at the end of it all, she’d see him on the opposite end of the battlefield after the Supremor had been destroyed and the Kree empire had been fought back. Perhaps he’d be in chains, perhaps he’d be negotiating peace, and perhaps he’d smile at her as he always did. Perhaps, with enough time and distance, things would be different.

Now though, with time, perspective, and some of the intensity of emotions fading she couldn’t believe in that future. Yon-Rogg had looked at her in the desert and simply said, _“I can’t return empty handed.”_ She hadn’t cared to understand what that meant, that the Supremor didn’t hand out slaps on the wrists. At best, after being tortured for his failure, Yon-Rogg would have been stripped of his rank and sent to perform some menial task out of the way for the rest of his life.

More likely, he would be made an example of.

He would have been banished, enslaved, or else executed for daring to have lost control of Vers and having the arrogance to believe he could contain her in the first place. He’d allowed sentiment to make him weak, it caused him to stall Ronan the Accuser in a misguided attempt to reclaim her, losing his ship, risking the lives of his team, and losing her in the process. In bringing her to Hala at all, giving her blood and desperately attempting to keep a simple Terran alive, he had lost himself to useless sentiment.

It was one thing to fight him back, to stand over him and prove he had no power over her, another to send him to his annihilation with a smile on her face.

Carol, in attempting to send him back to Hala, had unwittingly been sending him to his death if not worse.

But none of that happened, so it didn’t matter.

In this world, the one Carol inhabited, Yon-Rogg never made it back to Hala. He never even made it through Earth’s atmosphere. She hadn’t watched, only turned at the sound of the impact, shielding her arms as the wave of dust blew out towards her. When it cleared, there it was, that broken-down escape burning in a crater, and Commander Yon-Rogg trapped inside of it.

So, instead of leaving immediately with Talos, searching for some world beyond the Kree’s grasp, she sat at Yon-Rogg’s bedside. Maria and Monica sat by her often, trying their best to give Carol support, but he meant nothing to them. No, he meant worse than nothing.

Monica looked at him with curiosity, anger, and the same betrayal that Carol felt. This was the man that had single handedly stolen Carol from her life, taken her away from half of Monica’s childhood and left this Carol Danvers shaped stranger named Vers in Auntie Carol’s place. And while Monica asked what he was like, the good and the bad, what Hala was like, and wondered why he ever would have betrayed Carol like that if he cared about her at all (something Carol kept grappling with herself) it was clear that she just wished he’d get up, walk out the door, and never come back.

Maria looked at him like she wished she could cut the bastard’s throat herself. Maria had no time for Monica’s curiosity and open mind. Maria felt more than the pang of the betrayal to Carol, she felt the grief for Carol Danvers that she had never been able to move past, a mysterious death without a body or explanation to accompany it. Then, when Carol had finally come back home, Maria was gifted this Kree thing called Vers that couldn’t even recognize her. This man had taken so much from her, from them, and for what? For an empire that was slave to an imperialist, insane, computer? So that Carol could be their version of a nuke that they launched at uncooperative refugees? Whenever Maria was in the room, Carol couldn’t help but shift, wondering to herself if she’d start pulling plugs when Carol wasn’t looking.

Fury was more practical, as Carol suspected he always was. He pushed and prodded at Yon-Rogg, gathered blood samples (and the sacrilege of that, knowing what that meant to Yon-Rogg and so recently had meant to her, had her biting her tongue and tasting her own tainted blood), and always kept an eye on “Spaceman Spiff” as Fury had taken to calling him.

He also had a few very frank conversations with her.

“Be honest, Carol,” Fury said, his wounded eye now covered by a dark patch, “How much of a pain is this asshole going to be when he wakes up?”

Carol felt herself smile, an uncontrollable reaction, as she kept looking down at the prone Yon-Rogg, “The biggest.”

And that, at least, was true. For all that he was more stoic than her, more level-headed, balanced, and rational in his reactions, Yon-Rogg could almost out-stubborn her any day of the week. He was wily, intelligent, and never gave up. That was what had gotten him into this mess, wasn’t it? He hadn’t been able to give up on Vers even when Carol had already thrown her away.

Fury hummed, giving the man his best side-eyed glare, and said, “You know, we don’t have to keep him here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, as you pointed out, SHIELD’s not,” he paused, searching for the right words. That wasn’t like him, Carol thought, Fury didn’t seem like the type of man to ever mince words or grasp for what he wanted to say. Finally, he continued, “We’re not equipped for this extraterrestrial bullshit you’ve piled on us. We couldn’t get you into custody. Something tells me, if we let him get up and running, we’re not keeping him in custody either.”

Carol gave him her own look in turn, weighing his words, “He’s not staying in your—”

“So, he’s going with you and the Skrulls then?” Fury asked, looking too amused for Carol’s taste, “Have you told our green friend Talos yet? Because I’m sure he’s just going to love that.”

Carol opened her mouth, closed it, but Fury took the words from her, “The way I see it, we have only a few options here. Either he stays here on Earth with SHIELD, and we have one hell of a time trying to keep him behind bars and off the dissection table. He goes with you on your little quest, and you and the Skrulls have one hell of a time keeping him behind bars. Or he has an unfortunate accident.”

“We’re not killing him,” Carol snapped.

Fury just gave her another look, as if she was being willfully stupid.

“We are not killing him,” Carol repeated, and this time the words were a hissed warning accompanied by the crackling static electricity of her powers.

Fury, however, was hardly cowed, “I seem to recall this bastard being the one who shot Lawson, tried to shoot you, kidnapped you when that didn’t work out for him, and then brainwashed you to be the best Kree boy scout you could be.”

She knew all that. She knew that very well, felt the deep aching pain that everything she’d ever believed in and cherished was a lie. It wasn’t so much the Kree empire, the Supremor. That stung, but she wouldn’t put it past them, the Supremor was what it was. It was concerned for the future of the Kree as a whole and only the glories of the Kree as a whole. Yon-Rogg, however, was not the Supremor.

He had been her only friend, her best friend, and maybe the closest friend she’d ever had no matter how much it pained her to admit that. Flashes of Maria returned, and as they did, Carol could feel the strong bond in them but they somehow paled compared to the past six years. It could have been time, it could have been the distance between Hala and Earth, Vers and Carol, but she couldn’t imagine banging on Maria’s door in the middle of the night demanding to kick the ever loving shit out of her because Carol just had another nightmare. As much as she hated it, Vers’ world was still closer to her than Carol Danvers’.

Yon-Rogg had always been there, always supported and believed in her, and then it turned out it was just because the Supremor had told him to. No, it was worse than that. He had taken everything from her, worked to destroy her and build her into what he and the Supremor wanted, and when he realized he had failed he’d been prepared to do it all over again.

But, for some inexplicable reason, call it sentiment if you wanted, she still didn’t want him dead.

Emotions are a weakness, he’d always said. She hated that, this time at least, he seemed to be right.

“I’ll talk to him when he wakes up,” Carol said instead, ignoring the way Fury kept looking at her, the unspoken ‘is that what you think’ in his dark eye, “I’ll send him back to Hala and he’ll give my message to the Supremor.”

Neither of them noted, that at that point, it was still an ‘if he wakes up’.

Fury was right, though, and they both knew it. If he’d just landed back on Hala, none of this would have happened. Now they had to decide what to do with him and, with no convenient escape pod to launch him back in, Carol would have to reason with him, build him a ship, and trust him to go back to the empire with his tail between his legs.

Carol didn’t want to do any of that.

But she also couldn’t picture him kept in the brig on Mar-Vell’s ship, out of sight and out of mind, or left to his own devices on Earth.

So, Carol kept vigil, waiting for him to wake up, waiting for him to do something, and tried to think of which future she wanted to pursue.

Maybe that was why it happened, Yon-Rogg gave her too much time to think. When he was just lying there, his face smooth and blank, those gilded eyes closed, her anger could turn into grief and nostalgia. Because while he might not have felt anything for her, she’d felt more than something for him. That was why it hurt so much.

Maybe, if he hadn’t been Kree, they really would have liked each other. Maybe not everything about him was a lie, maybe they could have been friends, maybe he would have had the courage and strength to see and do what was right.

Maybe they wouldn’t be sitting here right now.

So, when he finally did open his eyes and failed to recognize her or anything else, maybe the lie had already been on her tongue.

Half of it wasn’t a lie, after all, it was a wish.

She told him that he was a Kree commander and she’d been his subordinate and protégé. He’d come to Earth, C-53, six years ago for a mission to execute a Kree traitor, Mar-Vell, who they believed had given a weapon of enormous power to their ancient enemy, the Skrulls. Carol Danvers, a local human, had gotten caught in the crossfire trying to protect Mar-Vell and what she believed in. Impressed, not because of her strange powers but because of her courage, he’d decided to save Carol Danvers’ life despite Carol trying to save his enemy. He’d given her a blood transfusion and taken her back to Hala under the mistaken belief that she would reach her full potential there.

The Supremor, the Kree’s unquestionable AI god, commanded him to train her to be a weapon for the Kree. He used this as a justification to bend rules and become her friend. For six years, this worked fine, and Carol Danvers became Vers.

Then, Vers was abducted by the Skrulls, and everything turned on its head. She returned to C-53, began picking up the pieces to her past, while Yon-Rogg watched everything fall apart outside of his reach. When it became clear Vers was lost, the Supremor ordered him to destroy her, or else the Accusers would do it for him.

None of that was a lie, exactly. It could have been true, she wished it was true. Even while she burned, her heart wished she could excuse at least some of it for him. Yes, he’d taken her, but he’d also saved her life. Yes, he could have left her on Earth, but then what? He’d have been expected to shoot her and if he hadn’t then Minn-Erva would have gleefully done it for him. Even if she’d survived, the Kree would have come, searching for the last remnants of Mar-Vell’s core and research.

If he’d wanted to keep her out of the Supremor’s hands, and at that point why would he, then he would have had to defect right then and there and kidnap Carol Danvers anyway to somewhere out of the Kree’s reach, at least until she could control her powers. They’d have to jump from planet to planet, avoiding Kree and bounty hunters at every turn. And how well would Carol Danvers have taken being forcefully kidnapped by Lawson’s murderer who claimed he had no choice in the matter?

And why would he? Yon-Rogg believed in the Supreme Intelligence, he always had, and more than even that he believed in the Kree. To him, taking Carol back to Hala, even at the cost of her memories and identity, was a no brainer.

The friendship, Carol wanted to believe that some part of that could have been real.

The lie was small, only at the very end of her story, so easy that it might as well have happened.

She said that, when Yon-Rogg had been forced to choose between Carol Danvers and his home, he’d chosen her. He stood down, defected, abandoned his team and his empire. He recognized the Skrulls for what they were, victims of a genocidal campaign, and chosen to help not only them but Carol.

It was so small, so easy, sometimes she forgot it was a lie at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes, when he and Carol were in the market, hidden away behind loose-fitting robes and thin disguises, he heard rumors of the Kree commander Yon-Rogg.

More often than not, it was the Skrulls who would go to market in whatever port they docked in. Per their biology, they were the best suited to stealth and disguises. He and Carol were stuck looking as they were, only capable of small superficial changes.

Carol hated being stuck on the ship, would always pace, curse, and when she caught his eye demand yet another sparring session. Sparring session, of course, meaning a chance to put another set of dents in him.

He never complained though, any moment spent with Carol was a moment to be cherished. He did wish sometimes that she’d take it a little easier. The muscle memory of Commander Yon-Rogg, expert in hand to hand combat, had never truly left him but the intuition behind much of it was gone and left him with many openings. That, or Carol was just better than she claimed and he was a little worse.

Sometimes, though, there would be some Terran good that Carol simply could not trust Soren to pick up for her, and she insisted on leaving the ship for at least one day. And, whenever Carol went anywhere, Yon-Rogg went with her. It was an unspoken truth, an elephant in the room as Carol liked to say, that Yon-Rogg was never to be left out of sight and that Carol served as his friend, protector, and keeper.

It stung, as always, but the Skrulls had their reasons. Yon-Rogg had once been an enemy, belonged to the Kree, and unlike Mar-Vell had given them neither a ship nor a Tesseract. The only thing he’d given them was his word and work ethic.

They’d never asked for either and after some time it’d dawned on him that they only tolerated him because what they really wanted was Carol Danvers. Carol Danvers, for whatever reason, would not aid them without him, and so on Mar-Vell’s ship Yon-Rogg remained.

Neither guest nor prisoner.

Outside the empire’s borders the locals usually made no effort to stem their hatred for the Kree. Kree were relentlessly mocked, spat upon, and their ancestors and precious blood cursed. They spoke of a war with Xandar, of the empire’s conquests past the long held Kree borders, the Accusers who stood as judges of condemned worlds that dared defy the empire, and of Starforce and its well-known leaders. To be Kree, to these people, even a reformed one meant nothing. If they knew what Yon-Rogg was, they would dismember him and drink his blood as ambrosia.

Yon-Rogg wondered how he could ever have belonged to such a vile place.

Carol usually pushed him past this quickly, likely not wanting to taint his perception of his homeland any further than it already was.

Sometimes though, he caught whispers of Yon-Rogg.

Finally, on the way out of a Xandar port with Oreos, Cheezits, and M&Ms in tow, he worked up the nerve to ask her.

“Carol, what happened on that last mission?”

She spluttered, choked on the fist full of M&Ms she’d just gobbled up whole, and spent the next few seconds wheezing as she tried to regain her breath. Finally, gaping at him like a fish out of water, she asked, “What?”

“The last Starforce mission,” he clarified slowly, watching her warily as she recovered herself, “The one where you remembered and I defected. What exactly happened?”

She rubbed a hand through golden hair, letting out an exhausted sigh, “That’s a long and complicated story.”

Yes, he imagined it was. That’s where she had first crashed to Earth and met Fury. At first, she’d fought against the Skrulls and warned Fury of their danger. On the path to the truth, she and Fury had travelled to Mar-Vell’s work site and had stumbled across not only Carol’s true origins but also Monica and Maria. For a mission that had lasted only a few days, Carol had been remarkably efficient.

However, Yon-Rogg had no idea what he’d been doing the whole time.

He knew that he and Carol had been separated, she’d fallen to Earth without him, which was how she’d been able to recover her origins when he undoubtedly would have interfered to keep her in the empire’s grasp. Eventually, at some point, he’d discovered she knew the truth and switched sides himself.

The details however had never been clear, and Carol never talked much about that part of the mission. It was if his defection from the empire, his finding her again on Earth, and his negotiating with the Skrulls was always taken for granted.

But if it was that easy wouldn’t the Skrulls trust him a little more?

“Do you know what I was doing?” he finally asked.

She looked at him almost warily, as if waiting for him to ask something she knew he was going to one day, “Sitting on your ass in space, mostly. We commed a few times, I think I gave you a panic attack when you realized where I was and what I must have been doing.”

“Yes, but…”

He didn’t know how to say it.

This wasn’t the first time he’d heard it in the market from sources other than Carol. Yon-Rogg, glorious Kree commander, hadn’t defected, he’d died. Under threat of death, he’d taken his team down to Earth, attempting to recapture Carol and take her back to the intelligence. He’d failed, she’d murdered the entire team, and if people thought they saw his ghost running about with Skrulls then it was because Captain Marvel destroyed everything he was and had one of her Skrull friends parade the shell of him about to taunt the Kree.

He was the fool of the Kree empire.

Yon-Rogg didn’t give much credence to gossip, he never had, but all the same he wondered when it had happened. When had Yon-Rogg decided enough was enough, that what he’d done was a mockery to Carol and all that she was? When did he decide that, instead of crawling away in shame from both Carol and the empire, he should own up to everything he’d done and face Carol? When did he say no to the AI, why hadn’t it let the empire know, why did it make them think he was dead? More importantly, when did Carol forgive him for everything he’d done to her?

It sounded like it had all happened in a matter of days. Carol had always made it sound fast but... He hadn’t imagined that everything in his life, the old Yon-Rogg’s life, could have changed so quickly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carol said with a shrug, “You’re here now, you chose the side of the good, and the rest is history.”

“Then why don’t the Skrulls trust me?!” he snapped.

You could hear a pin drop.

She turned slowly back to him, eyes wide, and quietly she asked, “What did you say?”

He wished he could eat his own words, but then, he had been eating them for years. For years he’d endured suspicious glares, locked doors, eyes everywhere he went, and the occasional gun pointed at his back. Gods, if Carol had not been there when he woke up…

If Carol hadn’t been there, he’d be trapped in this tiny ship of hateful strangers who would sooner eat him alive than accept his help. Some days he wondered why he even bothered, they seemed to think they’d be better off without him and if he wasn’t allowed to touch anything then he agreed. Then he’d remember, Carol, Carol Danvers was the only thing that tied him to this universe at all.

But it’d been long enough, and he was so very tired, “They don’t trust me, Carol. Talos, Soren, none of them trust me, they don’t even like me. They barely tolerate my presence. What did I do to them—What didn’t I offer them that you, that Mar-Vell, did?”

He rubbed a hand through his own hair, “Sometimes, it feels like he, like I, did nothing at all. Like I just walked onto this ship with you and made a home here. Carol, I have to know what happened.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t contradict him or confirm his words, instead, hastily, she said, “I’ll talk to Talos.”

* * *

As expected, Talos didn’t like it.

“He’s harmless,” Carol said, and at the Skrull’s flat look she amended, “He’s mostly harmless, he’s not going to hurt you.”

“Until he remembers,” Talos sneered, green fingers tapping impatiently on the wooden table in Fury’s office, “Until he stops faking it.”

He and the rest of the Skrulls had waited for Yon-Rogg to wake up, waited for Carol to give up on him and let him die already. They weren’t exactly thrilled with how long it had taken or the fact that he’d woken up at all. They were less thrilled that, now that Carol declared him safe, she wanted to take him with them.

“He’s not faking it,” Carol insisted, “I know him—”

“If you knew him so well then how did he pull one over on you?” Talos asked, tilting his head and waiting for her to concede defeat.

That was one thing Yon-Rogg had gotten right about her, Vers, Carol, did not ever give in so easily.

Carol gritted her teeth, “It’s… That’s not the same thing and you know it. He’s not lying, I know it, he honestly doesn’t remember.”

Whenever Yon-Rogg looked at her, before and after the reveal, there’d always been a certain spark in his golden eyes. Good or bad, gentle or furious, she’d always held his attention no matter what the circumstances were. She thought she’d imagined it sometimes, but when he looked at her the entire world narrowed down just to the two of them. When he looked up at her this time, it was only with polite interest, the edge of panicked confusion as he realized he had no idea where he was.

She was only interesting in that she was a person who could answer questions, not because she was Vers. For the first time, she could see a Yon-Rogg where Vers really did mean absolutely nothing to him.

For that terrible second, Carol had felt like a ghost.

Talos looked dubious but was willing to concede her point for argument’s sake, “Fine, but what happens when he does?”

“Then I deal with it,” Carol said, crossing her arms, equally unwilling to budge, “Look, we can’t hand him over to the empire like this. He doesn’t even remember what he did—”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Talos said, waving his hand dismissively, “Carol, we’re all culpable for our actions, even the ones we don’t remember.”

“By that argument we might as well cut off my head too!” Carol shot back, “If he’s responsible for what he can’t remember then I’m responsible for the shit I did when I was brainwashed!”

Talos pursed his lips, eyes narrowing, and finally came to the heart of the matter, “He’s still not coming. If he’s so harmless, have Fury babysit him.”

Funny, Carol thought, Fury had offered the same argument except with the words “Let Talos babysit him”. Nobody wanted Yon-Rogg around, and Carol didn’t blame them, until a few hours before she hadn’t wanted him around either.

But, priorities changed, and suddenly it felt like there was no choice but to drag Yon-Rogg along with her into the adventures as always. It felt, strangely enough, like the natural course of action.

“He’s coming,” Carol said, and then laid out her own ultimatum, “If he’s not coming, then I’m not either.”

The room fell deathly quiet. Finally, Talos said, “You don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it,” Carol said.

“We need you,” Talos said, “Without the Tesseract you are our only chance at finding a new home world. If you don’t come, then we’re stranded until the Kree come back to pick us off.”

“I know you need me,” Carol said, “That’s why I’m coming.”

“Don’t you remember what he did to you?!” Talos balked.

“I remember what Yon-Rogg did to me,” Carol said, hands fisting at her sides as she tried to fight off the glow and the fire, “This is not that Yon-Rogg, I won’t abandon him.”

It wasn’t just that.

When he’d asked her who she was, who he himself was, and he’d looked up at her with wide golden eyes she’d seen an opportunity. She’d seen the chance she would never have again.

Carol would be what Yon-Rogg couldn’t. She would be a genuine friend to him. She would never use him, never abuse him the way he did her, and when he remembered she’d look him in the eye and say, “See, asshole, it wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

And finally, finally, he’d understand exactly what he’d done to her.

And until then, she could have Yon-Rogg, the Yon-Rogg she was supposed to have had in Hala, back again.

Talos could see he wasn’t going to talk her out of it, Yon-Rogg was coming whether he liked it or not. So, he changed tactics, “And what if he remembers? What if he remembers everything, realizes you’ve made him a Skrull rebel like Mar-Vell, and he decides to finish us off once and for all on the slim chance the empire will take him back?”

“Then I deal with—”

“How?” Talos asked, “Do you kill him? Do you think you can? Because if you can, then you might as well get it over with and save us the trouble.”

She didn’t think much of her words at the time, thought they were just a small means to convince Talos, but she said them nonetheless, “He won’t remember.”

Somewhere, in the not so distant past, she imagined that Yon-Rogg must have said the same words to the Supremor.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time he could remember, it was Yon-Rogg woken from a dead sleep in the middle of the night.

Blearily, he opened his eyes, wondering what had disturbed him until he noticed the soft knocking on the door. He stumbled out of bed, rubbing his face, and made his way to the door. Opening it, he found Carol looking at him, a peace offering of Cheezits in her hands.

“Hey, can we talk?”

He blinked, tried to regain his bearings, and shuffled to the side to let her in. As always, she looked incredibly comfortable in his space. He imagined they’d been like that on Hala, his world had been hers and hers had been his, inseparable from one another. Perhaps, though, that was simply because he could not imagine a world without her.

She made her way to his bed, flopped down, and offered him the box. Carefully, he withdrew a handful of chips. He wasn’t much of a fan of Terran food, but it meant so much to Carol, he tried to indulge her when he could. Well, when it was edible. Cheezits were one of the few snacks he could stomach, the truly sweet foods that Carol favored, they were beyond his abilities.

He inclined his head towards her, waiting to hear what she had to say, but for a long moment she said nothing, just munched away at her snacks and refused to look directly at him.

“Would you like to spar?” he finally asked, wondering if she was reviving that old tradition from Hala. So far, it had only been him coming to her, but he supposed there was no reason she couldn’t come to him in the middle of the night when she was troubled.

He was, in fact, glad she had.

She shook her head, swallowed, then asked, “You’re happy, right?”

“Happy?” he asked.

“Here, with me, on this ship,” Carol said, “You are happy, aren’t you?”

He didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know what she wanted him to confess. What did that mean, exactly, to be happy? He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, but then, he’d never been anywhere else. Just Earth for a few days until he’d packed up and left with the Skrulls and Carol.

Sometimes it felt very lonely, he felt adrift, both from his lack of past and his lack of purpose. He had no real job here. At first, he’d assumed that was natural. Then he realized it was because the Skrulls didn’t want to give him anything of importance. Whatever he did, Carol came along to ensure it was done properly, and so he was mostly left to twiddle his thumbs and stand over her shoulder.

He imagined that, when he’d been a commander, he’d at least felt more utilized and less bored.

He had no right to complain about that, not after what he did to these people and especially to Carol. He was lucky they tolerated his presence at all, and if he had to spend his life making up for that, then so be it.

He looked her in the eye, smiled, and said, “I’m happy wherever you are.”

He wondered if the old Yon-Rogg had been. He must have, because he’d felt the avalanche of emotion for Carol almost immediately. Everything she did, everything she was, every way she moved sparked something inside him. He had no memories for her, not exactly, but she drew out something deeper from him. A well of emotion that could not be tainted even when the mind was damaged. He would follow Carol anywhere, and clearly, the old Yon-Rogg had done just that.

She swallowed, looking almost afraid by his confession, but forced herself to press forward as she always did, “And if you… If you started remembering anything, you’d tell me, right?”

“Of course,” he said, brow furrowed in concern.

Of course he’d tell her, who else would he tell? He couldn’t imagine Talos caring what Yon-Rogg did or did not remember, much less rejoicing with Yon-Rogg at reclaiming some long lost piece of himself. That Yon-Rogg existed only in Carol now, so of course Carol would be the first to know if any piece of him came back.

“Carol, what’s—”

“Nothing,” Carol said quickly, “It’s nothing just… The past isn’t as great as it seems.”

“What are you saying?”

For a moment she said nothing, just looked him in the eye. She took his hands in hers, always warm even when they weren’t on fire, and said, “Everything you need is here, Yon. You don’t have to hunt for the past, don’t have to search for it… I’m here, I’ll always be here.”

Yon. Had she ever called him that? It was always Yon-Rogg, his full name in Kree fashion. First names, she’d said, were very private and familiar things reserved for families and mates. When she’d been Vers, a Kree orphan with no surname, it had always chafed her after she’d put two and two together. It had seemed like the world was too eager to know her when she didn’t even know herself.

Then the rest of her words caught up to him.

She’d said she wasn’t going anywhere but she’d said nothing about him.

“Do you expect me to leave?” he asked quietly.

He certainly didn’t. The thought had never crossed his mind. Well, maybe when he was well and truly bored, doing truly mundane tasks like checking inventory even when Carol would be double checking his pointless work, he thought about it.

He daydreamed about the day he and Carol would be finally rid of Talos and the rest, where they could purchase their own ship, go their own way, and she could help him remember how to pilot and strike off on their own to save the world.

Just her and him, copilots and something more, heading into the heart of all that was wrong in the galaxy in the way only Carol ever could.

Sometimes, when he was truly frustrated, he wondered what she’d say if he suggested they leave the Skrulls early. Not abandon them, per se, just part ways for a little while and let them find their own damned planet. Of course, she never would, they needed her protection and as representatives of the Kree (no matter how unwilling) he and Carol owed them that at the very least.

Leave Carol though? It was unthinkable.

He squeezed her hands, “Carol, I’m not going anywhere. No matter what happens, even if I remember, I won’t leave. Whatever I did… It won’t change anything.”

She didn’t believe him. More, as the shadow of Yon-Rogg’s lost memories hung over them, he wasn’t entirely sure he believed himself either.

* * *

The trouble, Carol soon realized, was that she knew everything and nothing about Yon-Rogg. In those first few weeks she found herself fumbling for answers.

She knew nothing about his family, his past beyond Starforce, what had driven him to join and excel. She only knew that he always opened his door at three am, always looked shaken after meeting the Supremor, and couldn’t handle anything sweeter than dark chocolate.

Strangely enough, relieving enough, it was still him. As clarity returned to him, though memories did not, he started looking at her the way he used to on Hala. Only, there was none of the typical Kree repression of his emotions. His fondness was blatant, his smiles were easy and wide, and while he was still far more thoughtful and reserved than her, he no longer said anything about the weakness of emotions.

It was like she was meeting a Yon-Rogg who could have been, someone who grew up outside of Kree culture and the influence of the Supremor.

It was bizarre. It was heady. She told him all about what she remembered from Earth’s culture, Terran to him, and he didn’t blink at any of it. Yon-Rogg had sneered when he’d seen her uniform, called the red, gold, and blue an insult to Starforce. The first words out of his mouth now were that the colors suited her.

Hell, on being told he’d sacrificed everything for the Skrulls (the Skrulls!) he’d just nodded his head and then asked how he could help.

Talos, naturally, didn’t trust it. None of them did, and Carol didn’t exactly blame them, she wasn’t sure she should either but… He was just so earnest, so eager to please and make up for the wrongdoings that Yon-Rogg hadn’t even acknowledged. This was the man she’d hoped to meet on Mar-Vell’s ship, someone who would look at her, throw everything away, and admit he was wrong while trying desperately to make things right.

And it was painful how she had him and didn’t at the same time.

Sometimes she wanted to scream at him. She wanted to shake him and ask him why he couldn’t have been like this before. Why couldn’t he have found some way to tell her and risk the Supremor’s wrath? Why couldn’t they have run and found Earth, found the Skrulls, before now? Why did it take him losing everything he was to turn into the man she wanted him to be?

She settled for screaming into her pillow.

Except, that wasn’t really his fault. She felt like a hypocrite, reminding herself what she’d told Talos, that Yon-Rogg shouldn’t be held responsible for what he didn’t remember. He couldn’t tell her why he’d done it to her, why he’d been so eager to do it again, or just what he thought anyone would ever have gotten out of it.

Ironically, Yon-Rogg seemed horrified by both what his past-self had done to Carol and the atrocities of the Kree empire. He’d been the one to ask her why he had ever thought that was a reasonable course of action. Like she’d have the answer to that. She’d laughed. He’d sat there in dumb horror watching her double in hysterics, noting in a small voice that none of it was funny. It’s not funny, she’d wanted to retort back, it’s you who’s the comedian.

Still, if it had been this easy, Carol wondered, then why the hell had it taken his head being bashed in?

Yon-Rogg the changed man wasn’t the only problem though. Talos didn’t even pretend to like Yon-Rogg, and even memoryless as Yon-Rogg was, he wasn’t stupid. The Skrulls kept their distance, and the ship slowly segregated itself with Skrulls in one half of a room and the lonely Kree Yon-Rogg in the other. Carol serving as the Kree-Terran hybrid bridge between them.

For better or worse, because of that, Carol found herself drifting back into his orbit. At least, that’s what she told herself. If she was going to be Yon-Rogg’s own Yon-Rogg, the good version who wasn’t a treacherous dick, then she had to be the anchor he was for her in those six years. If it hadn’t been for him, Vers probably would have lost her mind (which, of course, was probably why the Supreme Intelligence had ordered him to make nice).

Except, part of her hated it, because he reminded her of how much of Vers still lived in her. For the first time, she was the guardian of knowledge regarding the Kree and Hala instead of him. Six years had given her more than she bargained for, and sometimes, she felt like she knew more about the empire than she ever had Earth.

Whenever the conversation stalled too long on Vers, she made it a point to tell him about Earth. She talked about as much as she could, to deflect and distract, and because he wasn’t quite the Yon-Rogg she knew he somehow didn’t notice how thin and flat her tales about Earth were in comparison to this or that mission on some half-forgotten border planet.

He nodded his head, took her words for granted, and Carol could breathe a sigh of relief.

And, when the sigh was done and over, she could wonder to herself whether she missed him or not. The answer was no but it was also yes, she missed… She missed Hala, the Hala she thought she’d had, and every day his face reminded her of that.

“Why did I take him with me?” Carol asked herself one night at three am galactic standard time.

Not so long ago, on a planet far, far, away, she’d have been banging on Yon-Rogg’s door right now demanding to punch him in the face. Those days might as well have been a lifetime ago, they were, in fact.

And now, there was nowhere to go, and she couldn’t answer her own damn question.

There’d been reasons for it, good ones at that, no matter what grief she got for it.

He couldn’t stay on Earth, she wouldn’t send him home, and so that just left the ship. It’d seemed so easy, and it was, entirely too easy how well they fit back together again.

If he’d just done it, said no to the Supreme Intelligence in that one, single, instant…

Then maybe this could have been real.

“Oh, enough of this,” Carol told herself, hoisting herself up to her feet. She shuffled her way out into the greater ship. The halls were empty, most of the civilians getting well-needed rest, and only a few of the Skrull warriors on shift for the night.

She nodded as she passed one, he nodded back, and she set about wandering nowhere in particular. She still wasn’t quite used to this place; not like she’d been the barracks on Hala. Whenever it felt too alien, which was often, she always took off flying outside in the stars. The trouble was that meant it never really became familiar.

“Shit!” she tripped over something, or rather, someone. Her head swiveled and there, sitting down on the floor staring at nothing, was none other than Yon-Rogg.

He looked up at her with dead eyes and, at her unspoken question, simply said, “I couldn’t stand to sit in my room any longer.”

She looked up and over him, noted the metallic door just behind him, and realized that she’d unwittingly wandered straight to his door again. Like nothing had changed…

Carol brushed away the thought desperately, “So you sit outside it?”

He didn’t shrug, Yon-Rogg was not a man who stooped to such casual, unrefined, gestures as shrugging, but she could feel him mentally shrugging.

“Someone could fall over you, you know,” Carol pointed out, someone apparently being her.

He gave another non-existent shrug.

Carol sighed, decided there was nothing for it, and sat down next to him, “Well, I couldn’t sleep either.”

She looked over at him, trying to read his face. Funny, she still could do that. Take out all the memories from him, strip out the Kree conditioning, and she could still read him like a book. Yon-Rogg was still in there, but it was like he was cherry coke now instead of straight Coca-Cola. Yon-Rogg, but a subtly different flavor of him.

“What kept you up?” she asked.

“Dreams,” he said shortly, then, with a small insincere smile, he added, “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Wasn’t it? She’d always said that too, always joked that it was just the same old dream every time. She’d been lying and he’d always known that. She’d relived the worst moment of her life nearly every night…

A moment he’d given to her.

“It’s not nothing to worry about,” Carol said quickly, but he didn’t say anything in turn.

Funny, she was sitting right next to him but there was an unseen distance between them. It wasn’t just the betrayal, if anything that had pulled them closer together. The betrayal had had her screaming in his face, demanding answers, and him screaming right back. This was quieter, something that pushed her away softly, a wedge put between them where none had existed before.

Someday, she thought, he’d be so far from her that she wouldn’t be able to see him at all.

“You know,” Carol found herself saying, “You can come to me for anything.”

She could have eaten her own words.

He said nothing to that either.

That was probably good, she didn’t know why she was promising that. Keeping him alive was one thing, taking her with him wasn’t too far off that path, even being friendly and courteous but that… That wasn’t just making him vulnerable, it was making her vulnerable, it was reopening the door between them and—And why did she want to do that?

She hadn’t forgotten what he did the last time she gave him an inch. So, why—

Then it struck her, sitting there in this metal ship miles and miles from Earth or Hala, that this wasn’t just everything they could have had, it was the best they could have had. This Yon-Rogg would never betray her for the empire, after weeks now he seemed incapable of even questioning her, and she’d certainly never betray him…

They could sit side by side like this, even after everything, because it didn’t matter anymore.

Carol could fix this, could fix them.

She smiled at him, far more brightly this time, “Seriously, anytime, my door is always open.”

(It didn’t occur to her until much later, that Yon-Rogg had once said the same damn thing.)


	4. Chapter 4

They were five years into their journey, far beyond the borders of Kree, Xandar, Asgard, or any other empire when everything and nothing changed.

They’d moved beyond the charted course of the galaxy, beyond the ancient borders of long standing kingdoms. As a result, the desert worlds became harsher and the garden worlds became stranger and more insidious.

This world in particular caused the hair to stand on the back of his neck. From a distance, the planet had been a swirling mix of blues and greens, not entirely different from Earth. As they’d landed, he thought to himself that Earth perhaps had looked like this place a million years ago.

They landed in a swamp covered in fog, water opaque, and the path ahead hidden amidst the foliage and mist. There was no sound despite the dense vegetation, no hint of any wildlife, only the too-loud sound of his own breathing and footsteps on the metallic gangway.

Talos took one look at the place and said, “Nope.”

Carol glared at him, “Talos, you have to—”

“Nope,” Talos said again, throwing his hands in the air, always very cavalier for someone of his standing.

“Anything with this much vegetation, that’s this creepy, was never colonized for a reason,” Talos concluded, “Well, I think we got a good look at this place, let’s keep moving.”

“You have to settle somewhere!” Carol said, throwing her hands into the air in frustration, “If you haven’t noticed, all the good real estate is taken either by Kree, Asgard, Xandar, or somebody. If you want a planet, then you’re going to have to settle for—”

“Hey,” Talos said, “We don’t have to settle for this one.”

Carol gritted her teeth, swallowing back whatever smart retort was burning to escape her. He wished she’d let go and say it. Carol could always say the things he’d never dare to Talos’ face and merrily get away with it.

Finally, she breathed out, pinching the bridge of her nose, “Look, Yon-Rogg and I will check it out for you.”

Yon-Rogg and I, he didn’t know whether he should be pleased or offended that he was so carelessly lumped in with her. He also didn’t know if he should be pleased or offended that she thought he was eager to explore this place.

He hated agreeing with Talos on anything, and after five years and more than their fair share of failed planets, he was more than willing to shove them off onto the first one that could serve its purpose. The trouble was Talos wasn’t wrong, this place was… Unnatural.

By the look on the rest of the Skrulls’ faces, they agreed. But everyone knew better than to argue with Carol.

Talos just snorted, waving them both off as he carelessly walked back into the ship, “Fine, go check it out, but when you get eaten by some giant plant don’t come looking for me.”

When the Skrulls had disappeared back inside, raising the gangway behind them, he and Carol looked at one another. She placed her hands on her hips, grinned, and asked, “Well, Commander? Are you ready?”

With a shudder as he began to wade forward through the swamp, simply said, “Don’t ask me that.”

The pace was slow going, the water was cold and miserable, everything was unnaturally silent, and Carol felt the incessant need to distract from all of this with mindless chatter. Reminiscing about a life and man Yon-Rogg couldn’t remember.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been to a swamp,” Carol said in good cheer, “We had a few swamp missions, and they were always awful. Kree armor isn’t supposed to carry a scent, but I swear, you could smell the swamp in the thing for weeks afterwards. Minn-Erva just about died—”

Yon-Rogg nodded dutifully along at all the right points, made sure to seem engaged whenever Carol glanced back, but felt his mind drifting. He didn’t want to talk about Yon-Rogg anymore.

It felt like, sometimes, Yon-Rogg was all Carol talked about. Not the Yon-Rogg of the present moment, not him, but the man she’d left behind. It was always “One time Yon-Rogg did this”, or “One time Yon-Rogg and I did that”, or “This one time on Hala—”

He’d counted one day. He’d stood there and tallied in his head as he and Carol cleaned the ship, exactly how many times the wonderful Yon-Rogg of old had made an appearance in their conversation. Maria had graced the world with her presence six times, Monica a few more times than that due to wistfully trying to imagine what the girl now a young woman would look like, Fury was nodded towards once or twice, and everything after that was Yon-Rogg.

In the past it didn’t bother him that much. In fact, it used to be comforting. It reminded him that Carol not only cared, but that she surely wouldn’t abandon him. It didn’t matter how the Skrulls felt, what he could contribute and what he couldn’t, her fondness for him was without question.

With enough time though, what was comforting became grating. Worse, now that he’d noticed, it was like she never shut up about him. Even here, even trudging through mud, slime, and just waiting for something to attack them she kept going.

What was so great about him anyway? From the sound of it, for much of the time they’d known each other, he’d used her. He’d stolen her, broken her, and used her for his own purposes. It didn’t matter what his intentions had been, it didn’t matter that he’d felt sorry about it later, none of that changed what had happened and yet here Carol still forgave him. More, because she forgave that Yon-Rogg, she also forgave the current Yon-Rogg who couldn’t even remember his blasted life.

Finally, he snapped, “Carol, can we please talk about something else?”

She looked back, at first confused, then wounded, as if she never realized that it might bother him to hear about a stranger’s life.

“I just—” she looked away hurriedly so he couldn’t see her eyes, “When I was on Hala, I wanted so badly for someone to tell me everything and—”

“No, no,” the words were wrenched out of his lips as they always were, pained by the sheer need to keep her happy no matter how it grated on him, “It’s fine, it’s good, it’s just… Surely, there’s something else you want to talk about.”

“Do you not want to remember?” she asked curiously.

Do you want me to? He almost shot back. He’d never asked that though, one of the many questions he simply would never ask Carol. Not that it mattered, he didn’t think she knew the answer either.

Sometimes the answer was a clear, painful, yes. Yes, she wanted the Yon-Rogg who had known her in Starforce, she wanted the fighter, the commander, the mentor he no longer could serve as.

However, other times, she would hesitantly caution him against regaining his memories. She seemed almost afraid of their return. As if, should they come back, everything between them would change.

“Yon?” she prompted.

He cursed, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, as if that was a ridiculous answer to give. And she certainly was one to talk, wasn’t she?

“I don’t know I…” he paused, tried to find the words, “It would be nice to remember how I got here, but the longer it’s been the less I feel like him. If he comes back, then am I overwritten?”

It’d been five years, five years away from the Kree empire and Starforce, five years of having no memories to ground him. He’d changed, he must have, if Yon-Rogg came back would he be nothing more than a regrettable stage in that Yon-Rogg’s life?

“It’s not like that,” Carol hurriedly promised.

“Isn’t it?” Yon-Rogg asked her dully, “Is your name Carol, or is it Vers?”

She stopped walking. It was so abrupt that he almost walked straight into her and caught himself just in time. Her hands balled into fists, but no words escaped her mouth. Finally, voice tense, she said, “That was different. Vers was just a blip in my life. Vers was this thing that the Supremor, that Yon-Rogg—she wasn’t real. I was always Carol, I’ll always be Carol, and nothing can change that.”

He could only smile as she so eloquently made his point for him, “Then, perhaps, I have always been Yon-Rogg and if his memories return then I, too, shall be nothing more than a blip.”

Without warning she took off. He shielded his eyes, hissing at the sudden flare of light, and then turned to look up at the sky where she soared ahead without him. As always, Yon-Rogg was left staring dumbly after her.

Talos would hate that, Yon-Rogg left alone to his own devices, but then he supposed Talos didn’t have to know.

Just like Carol didn’t have to acknowledge things that neither of them wanted to hear.

Yon-Rogg sighed, closed his eyes, and listened to the ominous nothing. He could turn back without her; he should turn back without her. Supposedly, he could defend himself, but there was a difference between walking by yourself and having Carol there as your golden shield.

Of course, then they’d have to let him back onto the ship without her. Undoubtedly, someone would ask whether he’d murdered her, betrayed her again just as he had years ago, and they’d spend so much time squabbling that Yon-Rogg was liable to be eaten by some silent swamp beast.

“Better to wait,” Yon-Rogg said to himself, sitting down on a lone rock jutting out from the swamp.

As he stared out at his surroundings he tried to keep a more open mind.

There were worse places the Skrulls could live, he supposed. The air was breathable, there was plant life all around, and you could get used to the silence. Maybe this would be it, maybe it’d finally be time, and he’d finally be—

Free wasn’t the right word, he’d volunteered once to help these people. It was not simply a duty or an obligation, he’d chosen to do what was right. Surely, he should honor the memory of Yon-Rogg and the choices he’d made.

Surely…

“Surely, you aren’t looking for me all the way out here.”

Yon-Rogg jerked back, that was not Carol’s voice.

Instead of Carol, a near identical Yon-Rogg stood before him. He was dressed in an unfamiliar uniform, the cold green, blues, and blacks of Starforce armor with its silver star in the center. The man stood at attention, hands clasped behind his back, but there was a self-assured smile that Yon-Rogg had never worn.

This was a man who knew exactly where he was, exactly what he was doing, and exactly where he was going.

“Are you afraid?” the man asked, tilting his head, “There’s no reason to be, this place is full of illusions.”

“The swamp—” Yon-Rogg said, eyes casting about.

“Shows you yourself, yes,” the other Yon-Rogg finished for him, “Or, at least, what you can remember of yourself. You’re not sure how much of you is left, are you?”

The other Yon-Rogg approached his rock, unbothered by the cold or the silence, until he was leaning against it and looking up at his other self, “Hesitance doesn’t suit you and neither does emotion. You’ve crippled yourself, Yon-Rogg.”

Yon-Rogg said nothing to that. There was nothing he needed to say. True, emotions clouded judgement, but at the same time they informed reflection and empathy. Perhaps it was because the previous Yon-Rogg had locked away compassion, guilt, and regret that he could do what he did to Carol Danvers.

“If that were true then she wouldn’t have done it to you,” the other Yon-Rogg said with a laugh, “Ah, precious Vers, so determined to be a saint and yet so willing to lose her footing along the way. Of course, you never minded that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“To talk about it you’d have to remember,” the other said, idly looking at his curled fingers, “And you have chosen not to.”

“I never chose—”

“Oh, certainly you have,” the other chided, clicking his tongue impatiently, as if Yon-Rogg were being particularly dense.

“I have not,” Yon-Rogg corrected, forcing himself into a calm state, breathing out his anger and annoyance with the help of a lifetime he no longer remembered, “I have no idea how I would regain my memories, even if I wished to have them back.”

“Oh?” the other asked, looking almost pleased that Yon-Rogg had said that, as if he had just fallen into the other’s trap, “That can be easily remedied. You seem to have forgotten, but you’re Kree.”

“What does that have to—”

“Your blood, Yon-Rogg, Vers’ blood as it were,” the other tapped Yon-Rogg’s wrist pointedly, “Your blood contains the cure to almost any injury, any disease. Drink it, even the smallest drop, and you’ll remember.”

He smiled, not fondly, but in amusement as if Yon-Rogg’s plight brought him a great and terrible joy, “The cure was here the whole time, Vers simply didn’t know how to find it, or perhaps she made herself forget it. You’re so much more docile like this, after all. So much easier to handle, easier to forgive, easy to play house with on a ship full of Skrulls.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“You never were dull, Yon-Rogg,” the man said with a sigh, “Don’t start now.”

Yon-Rogg looked down at his wrist, suddenly all too aware of the thrum of his heartbeat and the blood rushing through his veins. His throat felt unbearably dry, parched, and his tongue drifted to his lips as if he could taste the memories there.

“Once you drink it you can never go back.”

Yon-Rogg jerked a final time, flung himself away from the other, but he was already gone. The vision had returned to the mist, leaving only the silence in his wake.

A shaken Carol, crash landing into the swamp and sending water flying everywhere, found him an hour later.

Neither of them said what they had seen, only reported back that Talos was right, the swamp was not fit for any sentient being.

* * *

Once, she was sure he started to remember.

She’d almost forgotten that there was anything to remember. After all, unlike him, she’d kept mostly to the facts. She didn’t sugar coat what he’d done to her, didn’t make him some Terran best friend and shove him into a world he’d never known. For the most part, she was able to tell him exactly what life had been like, what he’d been like, and what the world was like.

There were no lies about evil Skrulls, about being an Earth super soldier probably called Rogers, nothing like that.

She flicked Cheezits at his head, watched as he batted them away with mild annoyance, and the long and dreary search for the Skrull’s new home faded into the background.

Until it started coming back to him.

He kept having bad dreams, that was the first sign. She’d find him camped out on the bridge, sitting in one of the chairs not touching anything, just staring blindly out into the stars. Unlike her, he never told her what the dreams were about, he wasn’t commanded to like she was. So, she had to sit there, guess, and try to comfort him in the only ways he knew how.

She restarted their sparring matches, claiming victories she never would have had a right to in the old days. He got better though, his body had remembered the stances that his mind had forgotten, he just needed to rebuild muscle and get his head in the game again. And for a while, everything was fine but…

He got sullen, moody, started distancing himself from her. That was impressive given his distance to everything else already. She felt him chafing at doing nothing, festering with boredom and frustration. He started losing himself in his own thoughts, searching for some missing piece of himself, and Carol felt like she was watching him slip through her fingers.

And then all the fears she’d had back on Earth, the ones she’d allowed to fade with time, came roaring back with a vengeance.

She didn’t tell Talos, she didn’t need to remind him that Carol had an agreement to live up to (I’ll take care of it, she’d said like an idiot). She tried not to let any of it show, even as it ate away from her. If he remembered, if he remembered everything, what was she going to do?

No, what would he do?

She’d taken the empire from him. She’d taken his command, his team, his planet, his culture, his entire home and made him give it up for a people he hated. Would he realize that it was the right thing to do? Would he really stand there and realize what the Skrulls really were? She doubted it, that didn’t seem like him.

Would he at the very least acknowledge what he’d done to her? He could do it so easily without memories, shouldn’t that mean that when they came back…

But what else had he expected her to do? She couldn’t leave him there, he had to know that, didn’t he?

Things were better this way. For the first time in her life, things had finally been easy with him, just like they should be. If he remembered she’d—

She ended up knocking on his door, just like old times, and asked him if he was happy. Yon-Rogg, he’d been complicated, he’d had moments of happiness, but she didn’t think he’d ever really been happy. There’d always been too much honor and duty for him to be truly happy. He’d always looked tired, always worn down, even when he smiled at her and forgot about the lies for a little while.

He looked so much better without the memories weighing him down.

And if he could remember that when he remembered everything else…

It didn’t end up mattering. The next time they sparred, one of her kicks was just a little higher than she’d intended. Instead of knocking him off balance and getting him in the upper chest, she kicked him in the face and winced as his head smacked into the metallic wall of the ship.

His nose broke, healed in miracle time thanks to Kree blood, but he sported a nasty concussion. He spent the next few days holed up in his darkened bedroom, forbidden from looking at screens, while Carol offered him food in apology. For better or worse, when he emerged from hibernation everything was back to normal, and the memories that might have been didn’t make a reappearance.

Carol tried not to think about how relieved that made her.


	5. Chapter 5

Yon-Rogg lost track of the planets.

He was certain he would have lost track of the years were it not for Carol dutifully marking her way through stacks and stacks of Terran calendars. Even then, though neither of them said it, he was sure that one or two of her conversions and calculations were off. The sad fact of the matter was that this many light years from Earth it made little to no difference.

Even if Monica, Maria, or Fury were able to see this far with their naked eyes, they’d be staring years into the past before Carol had even reached this place.

There was a sense of timelessness out here beyond the grasp of society. Everything slowed, without ports, without cities, without villages it felt as if these planets had remained as they were forever and would always be the same. All of them, even Carol herself, were just specks of dust drifting into their orbit.

He started to wonder if he’d be spending the rest of his life on this boat. It hadn’t been long for a Kree or even a Skrull, but he could somehow picture wandering out here forever. Then, when he had passed onto the Collective, the next generation would wander in turn.

And then they found it.

It wasn’t a beautiful planet. It was not Hala as it had been before industrialization nor was it Earth. It barely classified as a garden world but there was both plant and wildlife in the expansive desert and mountainous terrain that covered the planet.

It was far beyond the Kree border, far beyond where they even bothered to look, and as it was expansive it was also empty. It would take several galactic months to reach any hint of civilization, but that was what the Skrulls had been looking for. They could make do with this, for the first time in generations, they could finally make do.

“Yeah, this is it,” Talos concluded after weeks of scouting, testing, and analysis, “She’s not a beauty, but she’ll keep us alive and hidden.”

Carol threw out her arms in joy, lunged towards the Skrull, and twirled him about as if he were a child’s plaything.

“Watch it, I’m breakable!” Talos said as his wife and daughter snickered.

Yon-Rogg couldn’t hide his grin or his laughter. He shouldn’t, he knew he shouldn’t laugh, but he just couldn’t help himself. It was over, after all this time, it was finally over. He was so overjoyed that he could almost reach out and hug Talos too.

Setting up a village after that seemed like nothing. It took time, but the time flew by with each building that was erected and each defense perimeter established. And, just as Talos had said, it wasn’t beautiful by any means, but it would do.

This meager life, scratched out of nothing and inches from death at the Kree’s hands, would blossom in time like a desert flower. They just needed enough space to grow.

On the last night they held a celebration in the center of the village. Carol, as always, was a guest of honor and an honorary Skrull. They wove a crown of desert flowers into her hair and she danced in front of a great bonfire with all the children.

Yon-Rogg watched from a distance, just outside the village and its humming defenses. He shared Carol’s smile, though made sure never to catch her eye, she’d only invite him to the party he had no true business attending.

He’d have her back in the morning, when they would take the shuttle off planet, improved enough to get them to port where they could trade in for a more space worthy vessel. For now, she should have her goodbyes untainted.

Yon-Rogg’s goodbyes, however, took a turn he wasn’t expecting.

“So, this is where you snuck off to,” Talos said as he approached Yon-Rogg. He held a jug of Xandarian wine in hand, but for all that he smiled he was far from drunk.

Perhaps, when Yon-Rogg left this place, he’d finally allow himself to relax. Yon-Rogg doubted it though, this man had been at war for his very existence far too long to ever let it go.

Yon-Rogg tilted his head both in question and greeting, but this just caused the man’s smile to grow larger. Finally, he stopped just in front of Yon-Rogg, “I suppose this is where I thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me,” Yon-Rogg said, “I contributed little to this endeavor.”

Talos shrugged, turning back to watch the party with Yon-Rogg, “Well, we didn’t exactly let you do anything. It’s almost a pity, you were always good at exactly what we needed. You could have been very useful.”

“Could have been?” Yon-Rogg asked, but Talos just gave him a knowing look.

“You were never here for us,” Talos explained, only to look back at the laughing Carol, now stumbling over her feet, “I don’t hold that against you. Love is a very honorable, very noble, motive to do anything.”

At first, Yon-Rogg smiled in understanding, then that drifted away. That was not the story she’d told him. Yes, he’d come for her, left for her, but he had also seen the Skrull’s plight for what it was.

Yon-Rogg turned away from Carol to look at Talos, “I thought I—”

“Whatever Carol told you she’s—” Talos trailed off, cursed and sighed, “Let’s just say that she tried to make you… simpler than I think you ever were. You hurt her, badly, and you being around like this doesn’t help her make sense of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you should say sorry to,” Talos said with a huff of laughter, “Then again, I don’t think you should say sorry to anyone. It doesn’t mean anything without the memories behind it, does it?”

No, he supposed it didn’t. Carol had said much the same, had demanded he stop apologizing for the actions he couldn’t remember taking against her. Eventually, he had, but only because it’d seemed pointless to continue down that path.

Talos whacked him on the back, an unprecedented gesture of camaraderie, “You’ve done good, kid. You’re a far more honorable man than I ever thought you were, even if you are Kree. You’ve been good for her, and I think you’ll be good for her.”

Yon-Rogg wondered if that was supposed to be a compliment.

However, it appeared Talos wasn’t done, “She’s going to need you out there, you know.”

Now it was Yon-Rogg’s turn to laugh, “Carol hardly needs—”

“Life isn’t just about punching holes through armadas,” Talos dismissed, “Sometimes, no matter how strong you are, you can’t keep running forward. Sometimes you have to stop and think for a little while, no matter how much it hurts.”

Yon-Rogg didn’t ask what he meant by that, instead waited as Talos sighed, staring at Carol much the way he stared at his daughter.

“We’ve given her purpose, not much, but some these last few years. She hasn’t had to stop and look around, take a real good look at herself without the Kree in the way, thanks to us. That’s all over now. The greater galaxy is beckoning, and she’ll have to find herself inside it. It’s going to hurt, she’s not going to want to do it, she’ll run as far and fast as she can… It’s going to be your job to bring her back home.”

Talos spared him a dark-eyed glance, “You can do that, Kree?”

He didn’t give Yon-Rogg a chance to answer, didn’t seem to need an answer, instead he patted Yon-Rogg on the back again, shoved the jug of wine in his hands, and ushered him unwillingly over to the party. Carol grinned when he reached the bonfire, her whole face lighting up, and when she grabbed his hand she asked where he had been and why he thought he could be such a wallflower.

The words though stayed with him even as Carol finished her last goodbyes, tearfully promised to write and visit whenever she could, and they boarded the empty shuttle that would carry the pair of them back to civilization.

Carol grinned as the ship roared to life, hitting switches and turning all the levers needed for lift off and breaking through the atmosphere. When she saw him staring at her from the copilot’s chair she nodded towards the console in front of him, “Are you just going to sit there?”

It was the first time he’d ever been allowed to pilot a ship. Carol had retaught him what he knew, but he’d never been able to put it into practice. He’d probably kill them both if he tried, still, he was unable to help his hands moving forward. He tried not to think as he instinctively went through the motions that his hands remembered but his body did not.

The ship stabilized and they had a steady clean lift off.

Carol laughed in delight and shouted above the roar of the engines as the planet behind them slipped further and further away, “It’s just like a bicycle: you never forget!”

“What’s a bicycle?” he shouted back, but he was laughing with her. The bicycle, after all, was hardly the important bit.

Finally, when they were outside the planet’s gravitational hold, Carol let go of the controls and allowed them to slowly drift forward in place. She looked at him, eyes full of fire and light, “Well, Commander, where should we head next?”

She leaned back in her seat, placed her hands behind her head, stretching her back and allowing it to crack as she considered the wide universe before them, “Do we head to the Kree border planets, see if any of the natives in the colonies are as unhappy as I think they are? Do we go exploring? Do we—”

Yon-Rogg cut her off, “Aren’t we headed back to Earth?”

It’d been well over five years now and given the Terran life span her friends, Monica especially, would have aged. Contact hadn’t been prudent, and as far as he knew she had never reached back to them, had left Fury with a pager to contact her only in emergencies. Surely, though, now that her obligation to the Skrulls was fulfilled she’d want to return home.

“Oh, right, we could do that,” Carol said, but she sounded oddly deflated by the prospect. For a moment she said nothing, just stared with a forced smile out into the void of space, then said, “Earth is a long way from here though, we’ll have to make pit stops along the way, a lot of pit stops, and—”

Yon-Rogg stopped listening.

This was what Talos had meant; Carol was running from her past just as much as he was from his own.

She disguised it well. She bore her Terran name, Carol Danvers, with pride and would always bristle at Vers. She cherished every Terran good they came across, filled a ship that had no room with collected knick-knacks and paraphernalia from every port she could find and always explained their strange origins to Yon-Rogg with a grin. She adored Terran food, Terran culture, every aspect of the planet she left behind. She looked back with fondness at the friends and family she left behind.

But she was still running.

She held Earth in her heart, but it was only ever at a distance. She was far enough away that she could look fondly but it could never cause her pain. Out here, she didn’t have to think about how far she’d wandered from Terran culture and how much she’d truly been tainted by the Kree. By him.

“Hello,” Carol waved a hand in front of his face, “Are you even listening?”

“Sorry,” he apologized, only to earn a friendly punch in the shoulder.

“Seriously,” Carol said with a snort, “That’s one thing I do miss, you used to be a much better listener. Getting hit in the head went and turned you into a space cadet.”

“I believe I was a space commander,” Yon-Rogg corrected.

Carol laughed as if, despite himself, he had said something unbearably witty. Well, so long as someone was laughing.

“Hey,” Carol said when she calmed down, “Wherever we go… I’m glad that you’re…”

She trailed off, her eyes seemed caught on his face. She was looking at him so strangely. He’d say he didn’t recognize the expression, except it was familiar. He rarely saw it, but that was simply because it was the expression he always wore whenever he looked at her. Had she ever looked at him that way before?

She trailed off, leaned forward almost as if caught in a spell. No, it wasn’t just for, he was leaning forward as well, unable to look anywhere else. His heart pounded in his chest, he could feel his blood thrumming again, and just when he thought it might kill him his lips touched hers.

It was little more than a brush, a silent, soft, touch and a breath. However, it was enough to open the floodgates. She flung herself out of her chair and into his, hands locking his head in a steel vice as she devoured his lips. He devoured hers in turn, hands snaking up her back and pulling her closer, wondering if Carol tasted like light or if light itself somehow tasted of Carol.

There were no questions, no pausing, it felt as if they were either racing against time or making up for years lost. It moved so quickly, progressing from a mere kiss to something far more, leaving them no time to even relocate to a bedroom.

They only made it to the floor of the cockpit, awkwardly trapped between seats while the cold metal digged into his naked back. Carol collapsed on top of it, hummed in contentment, and said in a dreamy voice, “I could get used to this.”

“Maybe not in this location,” Yon-Rogg said, trying and failing to find a comfortable position trapped between Carol, the floor, and the chairs.

“I’m comfortable,” Carol said, her eyes closed, content as a purring Flerkin just after having devoured an army.

And she was, almost immediately after her eyes closed she fell silent, her breathing grew calm and steady. And there Yon-Rogg was, trapped beneath her.

“Carol,” he said softly but she only gave a small, discontented, moan. She clearly had no intention of helping him.

With herculean effort he pushed her upwards, rolled to his feet, and lifted both her and himself to a standing position. Then, attempting to keep a hold on her, shifting to carry her bridal style he fumbled with the console and set on auto pilot. He wasn’t sure where they were headed but he supposed they could find out later.

He sighed as he glanced at the clothes strewn about the floor. Unfortunately, those he’d have to come back for later.

Tottering out of the cockpit, he forced his straining muscles to carry her into her room and let out a relieved gasp of air when he deposited her on the mattress. Carefully, he tucked her under the blankets until only her face and golden hair were visible.

She looked at ease, he didn’t see her sleep, but he imagined it was always fitful and never truly restful. He doubted he looked so peaceful in sleep either. Here, for this single instant, she was neither running nor fighting…

“What am I going to do with you?” Yon-Rogg asked himself with a sigh.

He’d hardly force her to return to Earth, nor would he trick her into it. The time where he would manipulate her, especially for her own ‘benefit’ that suited his needs, had passed. He could advise her, not that she ever listened to his advice…

He sighed, rubbed a hand through his hair, and then his eyes caught sight of his wrist.

He drew his hand back, looked down at it, thought of the blue blood hidden just beneath its surface.

He’d put that swamp, the illusion of his other self, out of his mind. Or, rather, he’d forcibly squashed it. He had no desire to return to that Yon-Rogg, or rather, he didn’t want the confirmation that Carol truly did prefer that version of him. Then again, perhaps that was merely his excuse.

“I’m running too,” Yon-Rogg said to himself grimly.

Yon-Rogg was running from Hala, running from the shadow he’d left behind there, and while he thought he was forging his own path ahead in truth he was simply running. For refusing to restore his memories, he was nothing but a coward.

Slowly he stood, he walked out of the room and towards the small kitchen area. He reached into a drawer and drew out one of the sharper knives intended for cutting meat. He held it against his finger, sucked in a breath as he applied pressure, and watched as a single blue droplet formed.

For a moment, he simply stared down at it, and knew that if he were to take a cloth he could simply wipe it away and pretend it never happened. Carol would never need to know; he would never have to know either. They could move past Earth, past Hala, to anywhere they wanted and nothing would change.

Except, running away from something was far different than running towards the future.

Neither he nor Carol should be ruled by fear.

With one final breath, he brought his finger and the blood to his lips.

* * *

When Carol woke up it wasn’t on the floor of the cockpit, sleeping on Yon-Rogg like a contented cat, nor was it curled into one of the chairs. Instead, she found herself back in her own bedroom, tucked under piles of neatly folded blankets and desperately looking around for signs of company.

Yon-Rogg was gone, the only sign of his presence, her clothes neatly folded on a chair across from her and the fact that her bed had been made.

She didn’t know if that was better or worse.

“Kill me,” she whispered to herself, falling back onto the mattress with a loud whump.

She’d just slept with Yon-Rogg.

She’d just made desperate, passionate, love to Yon-Rogg in the captain’s chair of a ship.

She’d just rode that bastard like a stallion and somehow had absolutely no regrets about it.

As Yon-Rogg himself might say, there was no curse in any language vile enough to express the true nature of the situation. So, Carol just settled for muffled screaming into her pillow.

She’d be lying if she said she’d never thought about it. Vers, certainly, had entertained more than one daydream for a long time. Yon-Rogg was such a critical part of her life that of course she’d feel a sexual pull towards him. Vers didn’t just stop at sex, she sometimes thought about the never-to-be world in which they married.

Carol didn’t think she’d ever have those thoughts again. She didn’t think she had, but damn him, he still managed to worm his way under her skin! Somewhere in the past few years everything Vers felt for him was still there. Even the betrayal, the betrayal he couldn’t remember, didn’t diminish it.

And so as soon as the Skrulls were all safely out of the way, look what she did.

“They should call me Cowboy Carol,” she joked to herself, idly waving her hand as if lassoing the metaphorical Yon-Rogg, “Yee-haw.”

Well, this was just great, wasn’t it?

What were they supposed to do now? Were they supposed to date or something? Did Kree even date? Even being there six years, Vers had been so… sheltered in a way that she wasn’t sure how Kree even went about that. More, whatever Kree did, she had a feeling that Yon-Rogg didn’t exactly abide by tradition. Especially now that he couldn’t remember what tradition was.

Regardless, they couldn’t go back to Earth now. It would be awkward enough bringing Yon-Rogg back after all this time, confessing to a judgmental Maria that she really had kept him around this whole time and that they were best friends forever again. Adding, “oh, and by the way, I slept with him and it was awesome” on top of that would probably have Maria trying to dismantle Yon-Rogg’s equipment so it could never happen again.

Carol generally liked her amnesiac commander kept intact.

So, until she figured out this whole Yon-Rogg thing, no Earth. She let out a sigh, that was probably for the best, she had no idea what to say to Maria anyway. She’d let too much time go by, but somehow, it always felt like the wrong time to call.

That was a future-Carol problem though, the current Carol had another different, Kree problem to deal with.

Carol quickly dressed, stepped out the doorway, and tried to practice one-liners in her head. The trouble was that they all sounded awful, Yon-Rogg wouldn’t even understand the jokes anyway, and there was no getting around the sex bit.

She found him in the cockpit as always, just like she knew she would, and despite everything a smile turned into a grin on her lips. Yeah, she could get used to this. Once they got past the inevitable awkward and feelings, she really could get used to this.

She slid into the seat next to him, opened her mouth to find the words to say, but then closed it.

He didn’t look up at her, instead he kept staring blankly into space.

“What happened?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her, just kept staring out. Just as she was about to shake him he said, “I would have run further than this. If I had the power, I’d be nothing more than a speck of light. I would be one star among billions. However, unlike you, Vers, I don’t know how to fly.”

He finally turned to look at her.

He didn’t have to say her name, he didn’t have to say a word, somehow his eyes alone told her. That bright gold burned in a way they hadn’t in years, the center of Yon-Rogg returned to him and with it all the power he’d left behind.

“How—”

“I could have at the beginning,” he said dismissively, not telling her how he’d gotten his memories back or how it could have possibly been that easy, “It appears I simply chose not to. Perhaps some part of me knew that it would come to this and sought to delay the inevitable.”

Carol’s fists began to burn, her hair stood on end, floating in a non-existent wind, “You have no right—”

“Have I accused you of anything, Vers?” he asked, giving her a pointed look.

No, he hadn’t, not yet. He hadn’t spat at her for it and she in turn had not spat back at him. Her fists were still on fire. And it was like she just stepped backwards in time. All the ease, all the familiarity, it wasn’t gone but the rage and betrayal was back and she could almost imagine the pair of them standing in that desert again.

Through clenched teeth she said, “Well, now you know how it feels, don’t you?”

He said nothing to that, he looked particularly unimpressed, like Carol was cute trying to be clever about her revenge.

Instead, he cut straight to the chase, “Are you going to ask the Skrulls to take my memories?”

The fire in her hands went out. If she wasn’t sitting she would have stumbled back from him in dull horror, “What?”

“We can’t stay as we are,” he said it so calmly, so rationally. There was no rage in his words, not even anger, she couldn’t name the emotion in his eyes only that it cut through to her. “Either you, Vers, become an unwilling servant of Kree or I become the unwilling traitor. As you often say, I’m afraid there isn’t room for the pair of us.”

He wouldn’t dare. No, she would never give him that kind of power over her ever again, “You try that, Yon-Rogg, and you will die trying.”

“Yes,” he agreed calmly. He turned his head to look past her towards the stars, “You were more efficient than I was. I didn’t bar your path back to C-53, you, on the other hand, have insured I can never return to the empire again. Even if I subdued you, returned with each and every Skrull in tow, it would change nothing. The Supremor does not forgive incompetence, foolishness, or love.”

He looked at her, offered her a bitter smile, “You’ve done well. I couldn’t be prouder.”

He didn’t get up, didn’t fight her, didn’t say anything. He seemed content to sit there in that damned chair, drifting through space and time, as if they still had anywhere in the world to go.

Then again, he didn’t have to, his words were blow enough.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, “It—You would have died if I sent you back to Hala empty handed.”

“That didn’t stop you before,” he noted with a frown, still staring out past her, like he couldn’t even stand to look at her.

“It was an accident, you were dying, and when you woke up and didn’t remember. What was I supposed to do?”

He smiled back at her, looked as if he wanted to laugh, “And what was I to do, Vers? When I saw you bleeding, broken, glowing with the power we had spent so long searching for? Do not expect any sympathizing from me, it seems we’ve both managed to get our own back from one another.”

Yes, they both managed to get their own back.

They’d both used each other, with what they believed were the best of intentions, and tried to reshape the other to be the best version of themselves. For Yon-Rogg, that meant making her a Kree warrior, for her, that meant turning him into a Skrull allied rebel.

They’d both been used by each other, lost bits and pieces of themselves along the way only to wake up changed.

She guessed that made them even.

Finally, he said, “You can take the memories, my memories.”

“What?” she asked looking across at him. He wasn’t looking at her again, staring out with a pained expression, as if by just looking at her he’d lose his nerve.

“If one of us has to leave… I’d prefer it was me.”

It… It felt like her heart was tearing in half. Why did he accept this so easily? Why wasn’t he angry? Why wasn’t he fighting? She’d wanted his remorse, but not like this, not whatever this was—

“Why would you ever want that?”

He looked at her as if the answer should be obvious, “We’re not good for each other, Vers.”

“You could just leave!” she shouted, and it felt true even though it wasn’t. If he left with his memory intact she’d follow him to the ends of every world and past that. She would ensure he never returned to the Kree empire, never betrayed the Skrulls, and never betrayed her again, “You don’t have to—”

“No, Vers,” he said with a smile that was far too soft, “We’re not good for each other, but I don’t think we can truly live without each other either.”

“What are you talking about?!” Carol demanded, “That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“We’re incomplete people now, trapped between two worlds and lives. You’re Vers, desperately wishing you were Carol Danvers and somehow managing to convince everyone along the way that you truly are her. As for me, I am a man who never existed.” He looked down at his hands, contemplating them, and noted, “All we have is each other, Vers, even if it seems we do nothing but destroy each other.”

Finally, he looked at her and said the words she wished he had said a lifetime ago, “Vers, I never should have taken you to Hala.”

She laughed, she couldn’t help it, but the laughter was mixed with tears as she crumpled in front of him, “I should never have taken you with me.”

The words weren’t empty, not really, but neither of them had to speak the second part of their statements. They never should have done it, but they both did it anyway with far fewer regrets than they deserved.

And despite everything, she was glad he was still here, and she was glad he hadn’t run.

Space stretched out before them, the same as ever, and yet…

“Hey,” she forced herself to smile at him, held out her hand in a peace offering, “What do you say you and I go back to Earth? I’ve missed more than my fair share of Monica’s birthdays.”

They probably had things to talk about, they probably had their fair share of anger to work through. Somehow though, for the first true time, it was real. They stood on even footing, perfectly aware of the other, and as the lies between them crumbled away you could see the light of a new dawn peeking through.

**Author's Note:**

> I have fallen into the bottomless shipping trash pit known as Carol Danvers/Yon-Rogg and it knows no bounds. So enjoy this 17k one-shot divided into multiple parts because it's too damn big.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Vinelle for betaing the story.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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